The world’s largest auto manufacturer announced last week it would move about 3,000 jobs to Plano, Texas, consolidating manufacturing and sales operations there into one North American headquarters.

But Jonathan Kaji, who serves on the California Economic Development Commission and was part of a previous unsuccessful county effort to retain Nissan’s South Bay headquarters, criticized Torrance officials for “false and misleading” statements that they were unaware the company could leave the state.

“The city staff were fully aware of ongoing recruitment and outreach efforts,” he said in an email to the Daily Breeze. “I believe that due to complacency, arrogance, laziness and the belief that Toyota Motor Sales was ‘too big to leave,’ the city staff failed to launch a coordinated effort to retain Toyota.

“City staff missed all of the clear and obvious signals and failed in their mission to serve as the tripwire and to proactively ensure that Toyota Motor Sales would not leave,” he added. “As a result, the city of Torrance is now the ‘biggest loser,’ having lost the world’s largest automotive company.”

Kaji, a Japanese-American whose father served as Toyota’s first accountant in the U.S. when the company made its initial foray into the U.S. market in 1957, said he personally warned municipal officials as well as current and prospective council members weeks earlier that the company could move.

But, he said, his warnings went unheeded.

Closer personal and business relationships with executives at Japanese and other Asian companies could make all the difference to attracting and retaining them, Kaji said.

But he maintains Torrance officials essentially squandered the good will built up over generations that came from the South Bay being home to large Asian-American populations. That culture, in turn, served as a business incubator that helped companies from those nations successfully compete in the U.S., which is why Torrance has become an economic hub for Asian-based companies.

So, he wonders, why doesn’t Torrance have an economic development official who understands the cultural and business needs of such an important business sector?

Advertisement

“In Asia and Japan, that society is so highly networked, everything is based on face and reputation and, if you damage that reputation, that relationship severs and there is no recapturing that,” Kaji said.

“It’s embarrassing,” he added. “The city of Torrance’s face and reputation in Japan and, I believe, in the rest of Asia has taken a major blow.”

However, Torrance Councilman Kurt Weideman, who was among the city officials who spoke with Kaji, said his alert was not particularly time specific. Moreover, he said the scale of the economic incentives and tax breaks Texas was giving to Toyota means there was little the city — or California — could do anyway.

“He did not say that within the next four weeks Toyota is going to drop this bombshell,” Weideman said. “At no time did red flags come up on the back of my neck that this gentleman was telling me flat out that Toyota was already on their way.

“There was no opportunity for negotiations, and what were we going to give them anyway?” he added. “A reduction on the city utility tax? ... Yes, we should have known more. Were there red flags all over the place? I don’t know.”

Fran Fulton, the city’s economic development manager, said she was unaware Toyota planned to leave until she received a tip on the Friday before Monday’s announcement, which left no time to react.

Mayor Frank Scotto suggested Kaji’s critique was misplaced.

Should the city also employ Korean, Chinese and Spanish speakers in its two-person economic development department, he asked, given the nature of the global economy and the number of foreign firms operating in the South Bay?

And how does the city deal with California’s economic drawbacks compared to other states as well as the hostility of some state officials to foreign manufacturers?

South Bay state Sen. Ted Lieu — a former Torrance councilman — likely didn’t help matters in 2010 when he publicly ripped Toyota for shutting down a manufacturing line in the Bay Area and called for the state to boycott doing business with the company, Scotto observed.

“This is a statewide problem, not a city problem,” he said. “Having that (personal) relationship (with company executives) is fine to get information, but they’re not going to change their decision just because they go to lunch with you.”

Nevertheless, Scotto said he had a meeting lined up with Honda’s top U.S. executive, with the goal of ensuring that company wouldn’t follow Toyota and Nissan out of the South Bay.

One company has proposed buying Toyota’s 130-acre Torrance campus and leasing it back to the automaker until it moves, such is the speculative interest in the property, he said.

Two others — one in the aerospace sector, the other a Bay Area-based technology company — have shown interest in the site, Scotto said. Both claim they could move more than 5,000 jobs there.

“We’re very disappointed Toyota is leaving — it’s like losing a brother or a sister,” Scotto said. “But we have to move on. We’re confident we have so much to offer in Torrance that people will want to be here.”